No doubt anything can be described in any way on the internet, but the very first sentence of Rich Hickey's "A history of Clojure" describes it as "a general-purpose, practical functional language". But a Conj talk he gave in observance of Clojure's 10th birthday focused on one purpose, facilitating "situated software"...

when I think of the things I've build with Clojure, it's definely not a single purpose language. Desktop applications, data analytics, 3D models for printing, libraries, systems modelling, test data generation for automated driving, astronomy software. If they have anything in common, it's the data focus.

I think I agree. Design the language such that mapping data to data is easy. Design the language for interactivity. Sure, Clojure has more features than those two. Yet, it feels sharp when used for mapping data to data and for interactivity. --- I'd say "single purpose" for writing one kind of programs, interactive data to data programs. Not single purpose in terms of what kinds of problems that program should address. I the sense that Dropbox has a single purpose (sync files), even though those files can be family photos, PDFs of contracts or travel documents.

I enjoyed the text a lot. Thanks for writing and sharing! I feel like you're putting focus on something that's a bit wrong with today's view of technology. I want fewer single-purpose tools I can use together, not more everything machines.

Thanks @U3X7174KS, I certainly agree, I'm not in for all-in-one tools. Give me the best tool for a single task.

Unix philosophy with pipes and filters.

Ah yes van stapele cookies, excellent cookies, strong recommend if you're in Amsterdam. Though you should go early in the day since they close once they sell out (generally around 13-14, sometimes around 11)

I think originally as well he was focused on information systems. Those tend to be backend services, where the key element is managing information, storing it, retrieving it, having a record of data with history, querying it, transforming it, enhancing it, etc. Also explains why datomic.